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How your vote will affect your business

As the Federal Election looms, many brokers are considering how their vote will impact their business. We speak to Shadow Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation Mathias Cormann about what the Coalition's policies will mean for the mortgage industry.

Video transcript below:

Interviewer: Senator Mathias Cormann, thanks for joining me. Tell me what is the coalition’s view on the state of the National Consumer Credit Act?

Senator Mathias Cormann: Well, our view is that there has been a lot of change in recent years and really it’s time to actually let some of these changes settle down. We haven’t been happy with everything the government has pursued in recent years. And we have also, we have been able to successfully argue for some changes as legislation went through the Parliament. But I think from where we are now, that the important thing really is, to let the dust settle, see how things are actually working before we jump at making more changes. Whenever you want to pursue change, you got to be very clear about what the problem is that you are trying to fix and you know that what you are pursuing as a change is actually going to make things better, not just more complex and more expensive for everyone.

Interviewer: How would the coalition go about increasing competition in the banking sector?

Senator Mathias Cormann: Well obviously I mean, Joe Hockey has already released a 9 point plan on how to increase competition and there is a whole range of initiatives there, but principally what we will do on coming into government is hold a financial systems enquiry, son of Wallace enquiries as we have described it, which will very much focus on all of the policy areas that are required to increase competition in the banking sector. We do believe that some of the changes the current government has made in the wake of the global financial crisis have if anything led to a concentration in banking services and to a lessening of competition. We certainly think that there is some scope to revisit some of the things the government has done, but we will have more to say about that as we get closer to the election.

Interviewer: What are some of the policies you would introduce to support small business if you are elected to government in September?

Senator Mathias Cormann: The biggest thing we will do is that we will be very serious about cutting red tape. Over the last 5 years, the current government has introduced more than 21,000 new pieces of regulations and that is a lot of additional bureaucrats who are out there making life harder for small business. I mean every bit of additional paperwork that a small business operator has to fill out means, it’s less time that they can spend on doing what they do best which is you know pursue their business objectives. So we will run a full frontal attack on red tape to the point where we want to achieve about 1 billion dollars worth of savings per annum for small business from cutting red tape for small businesses and other businesses, from cutting red tape.

And of course the other thing that we are focused on is where we want to be a government that manages the economy well, that manages the budget well, which lives within its means, so we can actually deliver lower taxes and less red tape and all of these things that help to grow the economy more strongly. If the economy grows more strongly, that of course improves opportunity for small business. In particular we will be cutting the carbon tax. We will be getting rid of the carbon tax which is one of the significant imposed the current government has added to small business.

Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Bill Shorten was invited to be interviewed, but declined the offer.